Slavery was a feel good issue to mobililze the 'puritan' northern population to join the fighting ranks. Like every other war ever fought this one was about resources and power. The South had all the best sea ports and their was no income tax to fund the Federal gov. If the South seceded they would take with them access to large amounts of tarrif and taxation monies. Their alliance with the English also created a economic challenge to the North. The Federal Gov needed to continue to push back Mexico to the South, England in Canada and the Indian tribes to the West. Elimating the Southern threat and putting their population under 10 years of military occupation was the only viable way to concentrate forces for expanding the empire North, West and Southwest. That and the international bankers looking for a reason to get a central bank re-established after Jackson threw them out 20 years earlier.

Slavery was a feel good issue to mobililze the 'puritan' northern population to join the fighting ranks. Like every other war ever fought this one was about resources and power. The South had all the best sea ports and their was no income tax to fund the Federal gov. If the South seceded they would take with them access to large amounts of tarrif and taxation monies. Their alliance with the English also created a economic challenge to the North. The Federal Gov needed to continue to push back Mexico to the South, England in Canada and the Indian tribes to the West. Elimating the Southern threat and putting their population under 10 years of military occupation was the only viable way to concentrate forces for expanding the empire North, West and Southwest. That and the international bankers looking for a reason to get a central bank re-established after Jackson threw them out 20 years earlier.

A great question. I'll Let John C Calhoun respond first: "The Government of the absolute majority instead of the Government of the people is but the Government of the strongest interests; and when not efficiently checked, it is the most tyrannical and oppressive that can be devised.""A power has risen up in the government greater than the people themselves, consisting of many and various and powerful interests, combined into one mass, and held together by the cohesive power of the vast surplus in the banks."

Power always looks first to entrenchment. The Federal branch, weakened by design, in the Constitution had been consolidating power very specifically on behest of Northern industrialists and bankers for years. These elites correctly surmised that the South's continued usage of free labor represented a challenge to their drive for control of the western territories as well as trade profits with Europe.

I'm not denying that slavery, an abomination in thought and practice, was a contributor to the war. It certainly was, but like all wars the elites need people, usually uneducated people, to fight them. These people cannot be brought to sacrifice their lives on the noble cause of "enriching rich men". They need a 'moral' reason. This is where religion and patriotism excel and the issue of slavery went to the front burner.

The problem with American history as it's currently taught is that it leaves large gaps in knowledge for important events like the Civil War. Usually that knowledge is economicly based. The reason for that is clearly to keep the majority of people unaware of the mechanisms of a system designed against their interests.